The Gathering Storm (Crown of Stars 5)

Brother Egbert looked at him sidelong, then drew the Circle of Unity at his breast and mumbled a prayer under his breath. “Wise words, Brother. I will endeavor to accept God’s will.”

Father Ortulfus awaited them beside the low fence that ringed the monastic buildings. Sheep and lambs grazed on lea land, and beyond their pasturage lay broken woodland where the forest had been cut back for firewood and timber. Prior Ratbold stood among the small herd of milk cows, checking their muzzles and hooves.

“You have heard the news, Brother Alain?” asked Father Ortulfus.

“I have, Father.”

He nodded crisply, not one to waste words. “You will accompany Prior Ratbold to the steading. If it is a murrain, the law must be obeyed. The farmer must pen all the animals in. When they’re dead, he must burn them, and after stake their heads up as a marker of the plague.”

“Why send me, Father? I grew up on the shore. I know fishing better than sheepherding.”

“Go with him,” said Ortulfus in a tone that discouraged argument. “Do what you can.”

Ratbold returned, shaking his head. “The brown cow does have a limp, Father, but it’s too early to tell what’s caused it. It could be the mud, nothing more.” He brushed dirt off his hands as he acknowledged Alain. “No sense in waiting, Brother. Are you ready to go?”

They set off with ale in a skin and a hank of bread and cheese for their supper so that they did not trespass upon the afflicted farmer’s troubled resources. It was an hour’s walk to the southernmost steading of those that had grown up in the shadow of the security offered by a monastery held under the king’s protection. All the farmers around here brought tithes to Father Ortulfus twice a year, salt, honey, chicks, firewood, and occasionally a child when too many mouths overburdened scant harvests. A portion of the grain they brought in to be ground at the mill was reserved for the monastery’s storehouse, set aside for lean years.

Last summer’s harvest had sufficed, despite rumors of rot and drought ruining crops both south and west of Hersford’s lands. This spring the untimely heat dazzled. Flowers bloomed early; trees budded; green shoots poked up along the banks of sodden ditches. The road was all mud, so they walked on the verge, slogging through knee-high tansy and burgeoning thistles that Alain beat down with a staff to make an easier passage for the hounds and the prior. The slap of the stick came easily to him, rousing memories of skirmishes fought months or years ago.

It might as well have been a lifetime past. All that he had loved was utterly gone and could never be regained.

“You are troubled, Brother,” said Ratbold in his blunt way.

Alain wiped away a tear. Ratbold had a reputation as a surly man, impatient and rude to those he disdained, and perhaps it was true that the prior castigated ones who seemed like fools to him. But never once in the months Alain had abided at Hersford had Ratbold rebuked or belittled Brother Iso or any of the lay brothers who might be termed “simple.”

“I am only thinking of what I lost, Prior, my poor wife who is dead.”

Ratbold made no reply, waiting for Alain to go on. The sun gilded a profusion of violets crowded along the edge of the track, mingling with a golden scattering of coltsfoot, harbinger of spring.

“I am content to be here, for I believe this is where God mean me to be, but I still grieve when I think of her. She would have known a cure for the murrain.”

“Would she now? Do any know such a thing except witches and sorcerers?”

“Do you see those violets? A syrup cooked down from the flowers is a remedy for a child’s cough. A compress can soothe a headache. Coltsfoot dried and burned can soothe a cough as well. This and much more I learned from her.”

“Any herb-wife knows such lore. So does Brother Infirmarian. That does not make a witch.”

“She had great power, alas. That is why she died.”

“Ah. The cataclysm you spoke of when first you came to us.”

“I know none of you believe me,” said Alain wearily, “and I do not see how I can stop what has been set in motion. If I knew, I would act, but I have nowhere to go, no one who will listen—”

Rage yipped like a startled puppy, plunging into the underbrush, and Sorrow barked once and followed. Branches thrashed and rattled, marking their trail.

“A rabbit,” suggested Ratbold.

Alain halted and leaned on his staff. “It’s more like they’re frightened.”

“Those hounds, frightened!” Ratbold snorted, then cocked his head to one side. “Listen!”

From down the road came the noise of a troop of riders in procession, the jingle of harness, the rumble of cartwheels, and a faint snatch of a hymn. The two men waited as a cavalcade rolled into view, a dozen caparisoned horses fit for a noble lady accompanied by three carts and twenty soldiers outfitted with halberds and bearing a distinctive banner: a gold Circle of Unity on a black field.

“These come from the skopos!” whispered Ratbold. His staff, forgotten, tipped and fell into a swath of violets.

The fine and noble clerics leading the procession took no notice of two rumpled brothers standing humbly at the side of the road. The passing carts sprayed mud all over them as Ratbold stared, too astonished to speak, and Alain watched. There was something familiar about the lean, elderly cleric riding at the fore. Why had the hounds run off like that?

The procession moved quickly along the road and out of sight.